A Present History
by Lily MJ Fae
Summary: How do we know when we're reincarnated? How do we know who our past lives are? Hazel Rowan begins to learn as she attends Hogwarts and finds herself struggling with a ghost that sees someone else and begins wailing when he sees her.


**A/N: This is for round 8 of the Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition. I am the seeker for the Wasps. The prompt was to write about any kind of relationship between a ghost and a human (which I'm counting wizards as).**

 **The OC in this, is my OC Hazel Rowan. You get a little bit of her concept here in this story. And I hope you enjoy it.**

 **Final Word Count (according to google): 966**

* * *

The first time Hazel had ever run into the Bloody Baron, he'd screamed. He'd screamed and cried, as much as a ghost might. She was eleven, and in her first week at Hogwarts, leaving her first potions class when it had happened. The few nearby older Slytherins had laughed at the fear written on her face. They mocked her fear of their house ghost, and so she spent as little time in the dungeons as possibly, sticking to her own common room in Ravenclaw tower.

After that, everytime she ran into the ghost of the Bloody Baron, he'd begin weeping and crying and begging forgiveness. Hazel didn't understand why, and although she was usually curious and sought after answers to the things she didn't understand; that was one thing she didn't want an answer to.

* * *

Thus was her school life until she reached her fifth year. Hazel was barely fifteen when she started having what she deemed to be unusual dreams. She wasn't sure what had triggered the vividly real dreams. They felt more like memories, and yet she knew they couldn't be. Could they? But it was when she saw the Bloody Baron's face, the way he watched her in her dreams, the way his faced had come near.

The blood.

The pain.

She'd woken up with a pain in her side, hand clutched over it, and trying to contain her scream so that her housemates wouldn't stir. Hazel pulled up her shirt, examining her side and finding nothing more than the indistinct birthmark she'd always had, the one that was mirrored straight through on her back. Just like a stab wound.

She saw him the next morning, as she turned down a usually abandoned hallway, she walked right through him. She might not have noticed if it hadn't been for the nightmare. And it was as if being near him brought back that phantom pain.

She turned in a flash, looking at the slightly transparent figure. "Why are you always weeping?" she demanded, adrenaline having kicked in.

He turned, slowly, ever so slowly to face her.

"Why do you do that when you see me?" Hazel demanded once more.

"You remind me of her," he moaned.

Her face scrunched as she looked at him. "Of who?"

"My beloved, Helena."

"What did you do to her?" She knew that he had done something, perhaps because of the dreams, but mostly because of the way he begged for forgiveness.

"I killed her."

Her heart stopped, in fear. Despite the fact that she knew the Baron could do her no harm anymore, it was terrifying to think of him capable of murderer. She'd always known there was something about him she couldn't trut. Yet it didn't stop her from digging for more. "Why?"

"I was in love with her, from the first day I laid eyes on her. And one day, she ran away. Her mother fell ill, and asked me to bring her daughter home to her," he drawled. A distant sadness gleamed in the expression on his face as Hazel listened to him, keeping her distance. "I found her, and I tried to convince her to come home. But she didn't want to."

There was a long moment of silence. Hazel didn't dare push, and it seemed that even ghosts needed a moment to collect themselves and breath when recounting their trauma's.

"I stabbed her, in a fit of rage. Wanting to bring her back, no matter what it took. Seeing her blood on my hands, it broke me. And I took my own life. She was once trapped here with me. But she moved on, though I never knew how or why."

Hazel, somewhere knew she should technically show some remorse. She should have expressed her sorrow, but she felt none of it. "How do I remind you of her?" she asked instead.

"You are her," he said simply. "I look at you, but I see only her."

Hazel's head tilted as she looked at him. "But I'm not her," she stated. It seemed obvious to her.

"One cannot help what they see."

She didn't understand what he meant by that. But the adrenaline wore off. And the cool, demanding demeanor disappeared as quickly as it had appeared.

* * *

Hazel did everything she could to avoid the Baron after that. Seeing his face would trigger those dreams of his face, his sword, and the pain in her side. She avoided him, and there were times she swore that he was seeking her out.

For a while, Hazel feared even going to bed, unsure if male ghosts could get into the female dormitories. But after some research, and a couple of nights without sleeping, she was able to deem her bed a safe place. The rest of the school however, was not. And it wasn't easy to avoid someone when they could go through walls or had a knack for appearing out of the blue.

* * *

His story should have given her the answers. If she'd listened, paid attention, remembered her "legends", Hazel could have and should have figured it out before the battle. But she didn't. It took the Battle of Hogwarts for Hazel to piece everything together. Some ravenclaw she made.

Still, it had become clear to Hazel that the reason the Baron treated her the way he had, the reason seeing her caused so much anguish, was that he'd been right. She was Helena; reincarnated. The Bloody Baron had been begging her forgiveness his entire afterlife, and had found her again and begged it.

Her entire school life had been spent avoiding a ghost who had only ever wanted forgiveness. Who had only wanted to make amends, that she simply couldn't give, because she wasn't the same person, even if she appeared that way.


End file.
